WRETCHED

I like to feel wretched. So much so, in fact, that I try not to feel wretched at all these days, lest I leap off a bridge, or embark on a self-destructive love affair, or inject speed into my eyeball. Wretchedness takes several drinks and night. It is not the same as recklessness, but rather the end result. 

Recklessness leads to wretchedness, and wretchedness leads to a dangerous state of self-loathing, an emotional crevasse where the only option is to dig further down. I have felt the euphoria of this glorious despair, on neon nights, pissing blood in an alleyway while people fuck and fight in the streets like it's the end of the world. I have been punched, and liked it, presenting my head for another shot as the first one didn't hurt enough. I have smoked enough cigarettes that my chest felt likely to cave in, the ventricles of my heart constricting like the trick walls in an Egyptian tomb. I have wanted to chew my own lips off. Scratch away every strata of skin. I have been transfixed by lust, paralysed by longing. I have altered my state and been transformed into a monster, a smooth werewolf carrying a gun filled with silver bullets. 

So I understand how Laura Branigan feels. She's a good person who comes alive in the presence of bad things. She can't help herself, she doesn't want to. Like Laura Palmer, she just knows she's going to get lost tonight. This might be the one she doesn't come back from. But she doesn't care, she likes feeling wretched too.